by Sierra Rose
“Wait, did you just offer to put me on the payroll for...bringing you tacos and fucking you? Because I’m sure you didn’t intend to be as insulting as it seems like.”
“I’m not trying to insult you. I’m suggesting that you can be transferred to an executive consulting position with the company. Your livelihood, as you call it, isn’t in jeopardy. The fact is, you can easily–”
“Get paid as your consort? Your mistress? Whatever you choose to call it. No thanks.”
“I mean so you can have your own money and your independence without being tied up with a work schedule that could get in the way of things we want to do together.”
“You want to sign me up for direct deposit for as long as I’m your girlfriend. This is unreal, Jack. I’m going to attribute this gaffe to stress.”
“I’m not trying to solicit you, Britt. I want to express how much I value who you are and how you help me every single day.”
“Then say you love me and leave money out of it.”
“I can’t. Money is a major complication. We both know it. And for every convenience like the private jet, there are problems. Like what to do with the consulting firm.”
“Hire someone to run it. Leave us there. Let us prove that we can turn a profit.”
“I’m selfish. I want all of your time. I don’t want to share you with work.”
“You’ll have to, Jack. But you can be there with me if you want. I’m sure you could do your graphic design remotely from there. We have all the software thanks to you.”
“I suppose since I own it I can annex an office space if I need it for my freelance work.”
“Do you own the whole building?”
“Yes.”
“Then can you put in one of those Jimmy Buffett margarita blenders in the break room? Please? Please?”
“That would not be productive. I will, however, get you one.”
“You’re going to have to get me a margarita blender and probably rub my feet to make up for offering to pay me to be your girlfriend. That was fucked up.”
“It sounded better in my head, really. I mean, it was the idea of paying for your time, because your time is valuable to me, but I get how it came across as...whorish. I’m sorry about that. I swear I’m not my brother.”
“I know you’re not. And I get what you’re saying. It’s great. I mean what woman doesn’t want to give up her career and go on the payroll as a mistress so that when her boyfriend breaks up with her she’s not only single, she’s also unemployed. I mean I’m guessing there’s retirement plan but it still sucks as ideas go.”
“Look, I’ve been going through a lot. Apparently my sensitivity chip is malfunctioning. I guess what I was trying to say is this. What if you shared my money? Then I wouldn’t be paying you. What if my money was yours too? And we were equal partners?”
“Are you talking about getting married someday?”
“Hypothetically.”
“I’d still want to work as a bookkeeper.”
“Do you seriously want to be tied to a desk all day with a neighbor in the next cubicle who types way too loud? I mean, I’d like to think traveling around with me is a little more appealing than spreadsheets day in and day out.”
“Of course it’s more appealing and glamorous and everything, but it’s not a job. And I love my job. I’m good at what I do and I enjoy it. I didn’t go to college to get my Mrs. degree, Jack. I’m not looking for a ring or prenup or anything like that. I don’t want an insurance policy. I just want to live my life with you and—”
“I know that. But I think there’s a compromise here that’ll work for both of us. How about I keep the company open with a hired manager and a new bookkeeper and you stay on as a part time consultant with a generous salary to oversee the operations and spend most of your time with me. That way your friends keep their jobs, you build a consulting resume and have your own money and, like, a whole office with walls and windows and shit instead of that dismal cube.”
“I’m not qualified to advise on the operations of a company. Just the books. I’m an accountant.”
“I’d make you CFO but I have no desire to give you up to sixteen hour work days.”
“Why do you insist on giving me a job?”
“Why do you insist on having one?” he teased. “You already work for me, technically. So what’s the difference?”
“Well, shit, you got me there. I worked for your dad and now I work for you anyway. How about we see how this goes for a few months and then talk the consulting transfer?”
“We already know how this goes, Britt. This goes forward. You and me. All we have to do is find a roof garden you like and move in together.”
“I think, what with your dad and all that transition that maybe it’s not the best time to try to move in together and make that sort of drastic commitment.”
“I think that maybe you’re the one who’s scared to commit,” he said.
“I have reason to be, Jack. Kevin and I, after six months together, we were supposed to be ready to take that step and we weren’t. He was cheating and I was left holding that stupid folder with real estate listings in it. And he and I were six months in. We’d done holidays together. We’d met each other’s families. We were in a lot more serious involvement. We were couple for months—”
“You were not in a more serious involvement than this one, Britt. He didn’t take it seriously. He may have reached all the milestones and met your grandma and invited you for Christmas dinner, but he didn’t truly love you and he didn’t have honorable intentions.”
“You’re right. But the point isn’t that you’re right. It’s that I thought he was as serious as me. I thought he was for sure going to want a family with me. And I believed that and I was wrong. So what’s to say that I’m not wrong again, about you.”
“I may have eaten his lobster and sat in his chair but I’m not Kevin and I never will be. It insults me to be compared to him. He was just wasting time with you while he looked for someone else. I’ve found what I’m looking for and it’s you.”
“Then what would it hurt to wait a few months until we’re in a less dramatic place.”
“My dad dying so suddenly...do you think it taught me to wait and see? Or to seize the moment while I have the chance?”
“I understand, really I do. I’m just...I don’t want to go through that again, that loss and disappointment.”
“If I recall accurately, I picked you up at Tamarind. So you didn’t have a load of time to wallow in that loss and disappointment. We were together.”
“I know and you were amazing but it didn’t change the fact that all of my future plans were derailed and I was so hurt and so disillusioned and it will—it will just be a million times worse if that happens with us because I love you. I never really loved Kevin, I only thought I did. But with you, I’ve never felt anything like this before and when I even think, when I even get the slightest idea of this ending it makes me sick to my stomach and I think, really, that I could die of it. I don’t know how I would survive it even now. Much less if we get in deeper, if we live together, if we share every bit of our days and our lives—” She fought back tears at the very thought of losing him.
Britt threw back the rest of her sparkling wine and set the glass down shakily. Jack took her hand, completely enveloping her fingers with his.
“We will share every bit of our days and our lives and there is no if. There is no idea of this ending. There isn’t a whole hell of a lot I’m sure of right now, but I know this. You’re the one. I’ve been thinking and the thing is, I don’t want to live someplace where you aren’t there when I wake up.” He leaned over and kissed her hand.
“Wow,” she breathed. “That is the best thing anyone has ever said to me. I’m...wow. I don’t even know what to do with that.”
“How about you kiss me and we’ll figure it out together?”
She smiled. “That sounds like a very reasonable plan.”
B
ritt looped her arms around his neck and kissed him, just slowly sinking in to the reunion of her lips with his. She felt every bit of tension from the last few weeks drain out of her and she surrendered to the wave of emotion, tears rolling down her cheeks. Jack brushed away her tears with his thumbs and kissed her forehead, her nose, her chin, before moving tenderly back to her lips with the softest, most romantic kiss of her life. She made a light, humming sound of pure pleasure as he kissed her. Slowly she rose from her seat, never breaking their kiss, and settled in his lap.
Jack shifted in his cushioned seat to accommodate her form more comfortably in the luxurious lounge chair. She curled around him, her long hair falling across his shoulder as he cradled her in his arms and kissed her luxuriantly. For a long time, they kissed back and forth, stroking one another’s faces in wonder at their intimacy and good fortune in having found each other. Jack stroked her hair and leaned his forehead against hers, catching his breath and looking right in her eyes.
Britt looked at him expectantly, but he said nothing. It occurred to her that there were really no words to encompass this experience, this profound depth of feeling they shared. Love didn’t even begin to describe how she felt about him. Jack was linked to her now, with a powerful connection she couldn’t completely understand apart from the conviction that she must never be without him. Even with her arms entwined around his neck as he lazily kissed her collarbone, she missed him. Even this close, when it seemed impossible to separate which arms and legs were hers, she yearned for a deeper connection.
Sliding her hands through his gorgeous black hair, Britt nipped at his earlobe, kissed his jawline and reveled in the scrape of his stubble against her sensitive lips. She felt his response hard and eager against her hip as she shifted in his lap to straddle his thighs with her own. Instinctively, she rose up on her knees so he could bury his face in her cleavage. He unwrapped the scarf from around her neck.
“This was in my way,” he said half-apologetically with a warm laugh as he removed it.
“Here. I need that,” she said.
Britt wound the light cotton scarf around his eyes like a blindfold and he growled his appreciation of her adventuresome attitude. She stood up to wriggle out of her jeans and when she returned to him, his hands caught her bare thighs and stroked them. Every tiny movement of his calloused fingers divined rivulets of pleasure from her responsive flesh. He worked his hands up to the juncture of her legs and set his fingers there, rubbing, pushing aside her panties and stroking, thrusting into the hot wetness of her cleft. With uninhibited moans, Britt worked her hips against his hand, rising up and pressing down to get the angle and pressure she wanted. Crying out, she reached for him, his mouth fastening onto her nipple through the thin cotton fabric of her tank top, laving it until the nub was hardened, distended with want and his fingers brought her to the edge of insanity. Sobbing out cries of, ‘please, please, Jack’ she found her completion in a jolt of sensation followed by wave after wave of tremors that chilled her entire body with their power.
Already sweating from the intense heat of siesta time, Britt bit her lip at the anticipation of getting even sweatier, even hotter with Jack. Settling onto his lap more securely, she drooped over him, letting him hold her in his strong arms as she came spiraling down slowly from the heights of ecstasy to which Jack had brought to her with only his skilled hand and his irresistible mouth.
Reaching down, feeling with her sensitized fingertips to unfasten the button of his jeans, to slide down the zipper with its rasp that sent a shudder of anticipation through her; just from the sound itself as a herald of what was to come. As she opened the front of his jeans, his erection jutted into her open hands and she stroked him. She reveled in the velvety smoothness of his skin as she felt the length and thickness grow in response to her touch, which was at first tentative and then ever more sure, more excited.
Never had she seen him so aroused, so perfectly ready and masculine. He helped her, raising her hips with his hands and lowering her slowly, slowly over his cock until just the tip penetrated her and set off an unexpected shudder of ecstatic sensation through Britt’s entire body. Tenderly, he eased his incredible length into her passage, deftly, caressingly even. He was aware of every slight shift, every catch in her breathing, every gasp that deepened to a proper moan. He moved inside of her, stretching her, letting her adjust to him and take all of him in.
“Oh, Jack,” she whispered, the cool breeze brushing against her bare skin, relieving the sear of the hot Spanish sun that had been beating down on them.
His fingers dug into her back, holding her still as he thrust up into her. She brought her head down to kiss him, pulling off his blindfold. He blinked in the brightness of the afternoon sun, the pitiless blue sky, and kissed her. She gripped his shoulders as if holding on for dear life as the pounding urgency of his thrusts reached fever pitch.
Nowhere in her mind did she comprehend that they were outside on a hotel balcony in a posh neighborhood in Madrid. All she knew, all she felt was that Jack was inside of her and driving her to the edge mercilessly, relentlessly until she could hold back no longer. With a piercing scream and a shudder, her inner muscles clenched around him and she came, rocking against him to prolong the splintering sensation. He held her, crushing her against his chest and finishing inside of her, his thrusts slamming into her quivering body, weak from pleasure and exhaustion, slick with sweat. His grunts and cries mingled with hers as he pulsed inside of her. She sobbed into his shoulder with the powerful echoes of her release.
Jack brushed his lips along her temple just at the hairline. He made a soft hushing sound and let her weep. His arms were around her, shielding her. Britt clung to him as if she could never bear to let him go again. She felt so close to him and yet heartbreakingly unable to truly reach him. What if he went back to Hong Kong? She realized with a sudden icy revelation that she herself would have to accompany him. The tearing sensation in her chest told her that she could not let him leave her. If he closed the company, and went on tour with his band and walked out of her life, she couldn’t bear it. Just contemplating any separation was too painful, too impossible to fathom.
“Oh, don’t ever leave!” she burst out.
“Why would I ever leave you? Nothing could make me leave you,” he said with a chuckle and kissed her, his stubble scraping her swollen lips.
“Because we’re going back to the real world. We can’t hide like this forever.”
“Sure we can,” he said, his eyes sparkling. “I can afford it. We could literally hide exactly like this in any location on the globe, for approximately forever and not run out of money. We could even move every few months if we felt our responsibilities closing in on us. Do you think we’d throw a dart at a map, or choose someplace specific to run to? I always thought Bali had a nice retreat quality to it.”
“Besides here, I’ve only been to Washington DC and, like, the Jersey Shore, so Bali sounds good. Except you can’t really outrun your responsibilities. I mean, even though Dave’s a complete prick the best I can tell, I know you’d never abandon your crew on the verge of their first major studio album release.”
“I don’t, as a rule, like to let people down, but I can sit here in Madrid and see a significant advantage to living life the Charlie way.”
“What’s the Charlie way? Hide from life and open a bar?”
“The Charlie way is every man for himself, do what feels right and fuck them if they don’t approve.”
“It might get lonesome,” she observed, burrowing her head into the hollow of his neck.
“Not with you by my side. That’s the one advantage Charlie lacks, a beautiful traveling companion. I think, with you, I could out-Charlie the man himself in sheer magnitude of freedom and bliss.”
“I come with strings attached. He may be wise not to entangle himself.”
“I’d rather have your strings attached than anyone else’s or than none at all.”
“I think...I want to g
o back inside now. It’s starting to freak me out that we just...you know, outside on a balcony over a public street.”
“Yeah and we weren’t even quiet,” Jack said, looking a bit pleased with himself.
“Gosh, you’re such a guy! I’m feeling all ashamed and weird and you’re like ‘woohoo I’m a stud’.”
“I would never say that.”
“You know you would. Say it. Say ‘woohoo I’m a stud’!” she teased.
Jack got to his feet, lifting her with him as he went, looping her legs around his waist. Holding her with one powerful arm under her hips he raised the other fist in the air and bellowed, “Woohoo, I’m a stud!” off the balcony for everyone to hear and she dissolved into laughter, scrabbling down off of him and scurrying inside.
“Wait. I’m not done! Yo soy un semental!” he shouted.
“What?”
“That’s ‘I’m a stud’ in Spanish. Just in case anyone in the streets didn’t speak English.”
Britt practically doubled over with laughter at his hubris. Truly she was overjoyed that he was once again the same audacious, clever hot guy who’d bought her two margaritas at Tamarind the night they met and gone home with her, too. It was nice to see the flirtatious, brash boy who’d caught her eye had now begun to emerge from the fog of his sadness. She rushed back to the bathroom and put a plush robe on over her panties and tank top just because she felt the need to cover up. Jack just zipped up his pants and strutted in off the balcony like he’d just accomplished a major success. She laughed at him again.
“No more cava for me. It makes me reckless.”
“Wrong answer. LOTS more cava for you!” he laughed.
He captured her and kissed her.
“I think I need to eat something.”
“Did I wear you out? Are you starving from all the exertion?” He waggled his eyebrows at her and she burst into another fit of giggles.
